Republicans introduce amendment to ban gay marriage

Nine republican state Senators have co-sponsored a resolution that seeks a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Senator Jeff Angelo, a republican from Creston, says gay marriage was a key issue in the fall election.Angelo says many voters said moral values were their number one issue, and he finds it interesting that legislative leaders declared conservative social issues off the table this year in the evenly-divided state Senate where there are 25 republicans and 25 democrats. “To me it’s akin that you would come back into session and say ‘Well, we’re not going to address jobs,'” Angelo says. The constitutional ban on gay marriage failed last year in the state Senate when republicans held a majority of Senate seats, and some of the main backers of the proposal lost their re-election bids. Angelo, though, says this year’s even split between the two political parties in the Senate should not be seen as an impediment to passage of a ban on gay marriage. Angelo says many of the new democrat legislators are socially conservative, and many senators spoke out against gay marriage during the fall campaign.”I guess from a personal standpoint as well we’re going to spend a lot of money this year and into the future addressing the fall-out that results as a matter of broken families, but we never seem as a legislature to actually take a stand on behalf of strengthening the family in the first place,” Angelo says. Neither of the elected republican leaders in the Iowa Senate are backing the proposal. Here’s a list of the other senators who’re sponsoring the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage: Senator Jerry Behn of Boone; Senator David Johnson of Ocheydan ; Senator James Hahn of Muscatine; Senator Larry McKibben of Marshalltown; Senator Nancy Boettger of Harlan; Senator James Seymour of Woodbine; Senator Bob Brunkhorst of Waverly and Senator Paul McKinley of Chariton.